


The Name Thereof

by SimplexityJane



Series: In the Beginning [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 18:41:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1658510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SimplexityJane/pseuds/SimplexityJane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are names that Natasha has been called, but only one she chose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Name Thereof

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the same 'verse as Fires in the Garden of Eden. Title is taken from Genesis 20:19.

\- 12

“My name is Natasha Alianovna Romanoff,” she said. That wasn’t a lie. “I was born in 1984. I don’t know the date.”

That _was_ a lie, both parts. The agent on the other side of the desk didn’t flinch, though, and he typed up the birth certificate with a smile. She looked at the sweat on his forehead, the jumping pulse in his throat, and shifted so that he would only see the open line of her body and not her clenched fists.

She could kill him without breaking a sweat. He wasn’t a real field agent—the nametag he wore identified him as a Level 3 Operative, which meant that he was probably security for some government official.

Cyber security. That was going to make what she did difficult.

Eventually they were going to figure out she didn’t age.

\- 60

“Natalia, _run_ ,” Papa said, and she did.

They caught her anyway. They always caught her, until she figured out how to make running look like a fight, like what _they_ wanted.

Then they caught her, this time in her own mind.

 _This isn’t fair_.  

\- 8

“Agent Romanoff, you realize that if you do this you might begin to age normally, but you also might die,” Nick Fury said, and she smiled.

“I’ve never had a choice before, Nick,” she said. “Even what I can’t remember was _taken_ from me, not my choice. I’ve given you everything on the Red Room and the KGB that I remember, and anyone can do what I do.” It was all very logical, but Natasha itched on the inside to just _take_ the drug and inject it herself.

She’d never wondered if aliens existed. After this, she was going to read every book on them.

There was no other way to thank them.

\- 38

“Nina!” her handler said, arms out. She nodded—a bug, then, and stepped into his arms. They were warm, even the metal arm that he always covered. She let herself have one moment of comfort from them.

“Ivan, my dear, how was your day?”

“Very well.”

She wouldn’t remember this or the blood later on, but she would always hate that name.

\- 4

“Tasha,” Clint said. Natasha hummed, carding her fingers through his hair.

Cabo was turning out to be a good idea. Coulson had joked with them when they left for their vacation—doubling as a sort of honeymoon, though they were never getting married—and nothing had blown up yet. They had been here two weeks, and Natasha hadn’t even gotten sunburn once. Tangled up in their bed now was as close to perfect as she’d ever gotten.

“Do you ever wonder what you’ll do later?” he asked, opening his eyes. He touched one of his hearing aids, smiling ruefully. “After—everything?”

When she was old, she thought. She was already old, but only in memory. She had been eighteen for almost sixty years, and even now she was _young_. People had asked her why she was with Clint. Granted, they had all been young men.

“No,” she said. She was going to die doing this job. They had no extraction plans for her or Clint—not because they were expendable, but because they were good at their jobs. Someday that was going to get them killed.

She remembered someone telling her that but not who: _always have backup_. The memory was nice even if everything else was not—warmth, arms like Clint’s around her and a voice in her ear.

“Let’s go to Paris,” Clint said. “When we’re old and wrinkly, and you only carry _two_ types of poisons on you.”

“We should go to Cannes if we’re in France. If we time it right, we could watch some good films.”

She always played along with these games. They made her feel like maybe she and Clint had a chance.

0

_The truth is a matter of circumstance._

She couldn’t live like that anymore, though, not with her truth written for the whole world to see.

So she went out to find the truth that had been hidden even from her.

\+ 1

Natasha’s list looked like this:

_String beans with spices, bad Chinese, fried oreos, grilled cheese with onions, stuffed peppers, fruit salad. Lorde, Beethoven, Ella Fitzgerald, Umm Kulthum, Edith Piaf, Marvin Gaye, Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj. Leather, wood, throw pillows. Star Trek (all series), Nikita, Brave, Mulan. Pina Coladas, Kahlua, vodka. Hipster clothes._

_Getting up at nine. Being recognized and feared. Dancing in a crowded bar without checking all the exits first. Kissing without an agenda. Kissing women. Kissing people. Sex. Staying after sex and making breakfast. Baking bread. Swearing at people in multiple languages. Being recognized and thanked. Drinking soda._

She liked it. That was a person she could maybe become. She wore glasses she had no use for and laughed over records (they didn’t have the best quality, but she’d gotten a record player and remembered one from sometime in her past, dancing to a sad song). She never answered when people called her the Black Widow, flipping them off instead. She didn’t date, had a string of casual sexual partners instead. She didn’t think she would date for a while, actually. After Clint she’d repressed everything, but now she had time to heal.

Pepper Potts was the Director of a new counter terrorist organization. Why they called it _SID_ Natasha had no idea.

“I don’t know,” Clint said. He was living at the Avengers Tower full time now and was under Tony, technically. “You could join either organization, honestly. They’d both take you.”

S.H.I.E.L.D. had been corrupt. SID probably thought it was too young to be corrupt, but no one knew what was happening there.

So she joined SID.

\+ 10

“Aunty Nat, come ‘splore with me,” Jay said, grabbing Natasha’s hand. She grinned down at him and his sunglasses, then pressed the screens so they all went dark and locked.

“Where are we going?” she asked very seriously. If it was dangerous Pepper would have her head, and if it was fun and Tony didn’t get in on it, _he’d_ start complaining.

“We’re going in the vents, duh,” he said, grinning. The cameras following him all turned their attention on her, and Natasha schooled her expression into a smile. Even a month after the accident, things hadn’t quite gone back to normal. “I’ve gotta make sure I can still be quiet even with the cameras.”

Her heart lurched in her chest. They hadn’t done this yet with his cameras, and she had thought that they might never do it again.

“Okay, but we have to be even more quiet than usual.”

“I don’t wanna wake Nate up either,” he said, nodding. Natasha grinned.

\+ 3

“Agent Romanoff, you’re trying to seduce me,” Darcy Lewis said over her explosively pink drink. Natasha tilted her glass of whiskey at her, grinning too, and let her foot slide up Darcy’s shin. “You know, my mom always warned me not to flirt in bars if I ever wanted something serious.”

“She thought anything about you was serious?” Natasha asked. Darcy snorted a laugh and put her drink down immediately, letting herself go. She didn’t laugh like most women Natasha knew, let it take her away from everything. She was one of the most powerful people in the world, and she laughed like a child.

Natasha had met all sorts of people, enough to know that they weren’t really unique. Darcy laughed like that but carried a modified taser and knew how to swordfight. She hated guns but slit a man’s throat last week when she realized _she_ had to. She laughed like this, but as soon as she was finished she blushed and pulled her drink close to her face.

“Well, I _am_ next in line to Pepper Potts’s throne,” she pointed out. “I guess something about me must be serious.” She looked down at her drink and took a gulp of it. “How did that happen again?”

Natasha didn’t answer her. She took her hand and smiled instead. If she kept staring at her like this, Darcy would think she was in love with her in a minute and a half. She looked at their hands.

“I think your mother was wrong about bars,” she said.

\+ 2

“You look good, Nat,” Clint said. Natasha grinned, freedom bubbling up under her skin. Even after the Avengers absolutely destroyed Ultron, she felt _good_.

“I’m happier now than I’ve been in a long time,” she said, and Clint pressed his forehead to hers.

\+ 7

“Honey, I just realized something,” Darcy said, taking her glasses off. Behind them her eyes were wide with terror. Natasha grinned, both at the term of endearment and the fear. “I have a higher clearance level than you now.”

Natasha slipped down from her perch on the chair, which she’d been using to put up curtains. (She’d seen it in a movie and Darcy thought it was hot.) She smirked, shaking her head, and Darcy grinned back at her.

“It’s sinking in, isn’t it?” she asked, and Darcy nodded, letting her head fall into her arms. “Director of—are you really calling it S.W.O.R.D.?”

“That’s what it’s been forever,” Darcy said, voice muffled. Natasha slid her fingers through Darcy’s hair, scratching her neck. “Pepper just didn’t want to call it that because of all the crap with S.H.I.E.L.D., but I had Bishop run some numbers. People will like it now, after everything with the mutants. It ‘implies a level of control over the situation that no one actually has’.” She looked up. “I swear to God they get more boring every year.”

“Well, it’s too late to give it back,” Natasha said. “You’ll do fine, Director.”


End file.
